You’re “trying to figure it out”? This is the thread for you then.
ITT - is it better to rent a product identical to one you could buy? When the purchase price is about the same as the rental fee?
If your answer to this is “yes, it’s better to rent” congrats - make your vote and blow your cash, but don’t kid yourself you made a saving.
I don’t get how you can say the purchase price is about the same as the ”rental price”.
The purchase price for me so far would’ve been about $600, and this is if I completely ignore all the games I’ve played that I would never have bought but ended up playing and actually enjoyed since I got to try them for free. So these are low figures.
And the ”rental fee” so far has been about $100.
Today:
$600 - $100 = $500 saved
My ”rental fee” will keep increasing over time of course since every year adds another yearly subscription fee, but I can guarantee that my purchase price would have increased more over the same period. This year alone we still have a number of big releases coming that I’ll pay $0 to play while I would’ve payed $60-70 for each of them without the subscription.
The downside is that if I’ll archive my console and cancel my sub in a few years I won’t have anything to play on it when I start it up again without starting a new sub.
But I’ve gone through this with movies too and buying VHS, DVD, Bluray movies and TVshow boxes has honestly been a huge waste of money. I still have a couple of hundred movies on shelves and they’re barely worth anything at all now, in 2021 they’re with a few exceptions a waste of space and plastic.
And while movie streaming is in lower quality I still see 99.9% of all movies that way now.
With game subscriptions like Xbox Gamepass there are no quality downgrades. Same games, same quality, less money.
Those who don’t normally buy many games each year should look elsewhere though. Then it’s not cheaper. That I can agree on.